Just got back from it, and it was pretty damned good.

[Major spoilers on their way...]

I liked it as well as the first one, which I liked quite a lot. Good story, good acting, pretty good dialogue. What's most impressive about the X-Men movies so far is their ability to juggle so many different characters and not turn it into a mess.

Not only do they manage to juggle them, but they manage to orchestrate them into a damned entertaining flick.

I liked the fact that there was more than one layer of villains (General Stryker and Magneto's crew), with lots of shifting alliances. The movie was never confusing, though.

A few questions/observations/gripes:

1. Colossus was cool, but he was in the film for about thirty seconds. I wanted more Colossus, dammit.

2. Speaking of which, where the hell did he and the rest of the kids hide out through the whole movie?

3. Kelly Hu. Mmmm. I wish she'd done more than crack her knuckles through most of the film. And I actually thought the fight scene between her and Wolverine wasn't really choreographed all that well. Most of the time I couldn't tell what the hell was going on. The action was quick-cut and confused.

Also, I was never clear on her loyalties. She was always drugged up by Stryker, which made her a little boring as a character, and actually made her death quite tragic. I thought perhaps Wolverine would lament a little more over killing her, the only other person in the world like him...but nope.

4. It was a bit long, but this is forgivable.

The part I had the most problem with was the ending. It was a bit of a head-scratcher. Some related questions:

5. Jean Gray's powers were jumping off the charts...they never explained why. "You've been different ever since Liberty Island," Wolverine tells her. Yeah. Why?

6. When I first saw the dam start to break, I thought, "Oh, Iceman/Iceteen/Bobby is going to just freeze all that water." Nope. Why not? He's not powerful enough? Too much water? Never seemed to even cross his mind, though.

7. And what's with the enigmatic crap at the very end? I know they want to leave something of a cliffhangar for the next film...but what gives? Jean Gray becomes a fish? Lady of the Lake?

8. Another thing I just remembered...the movie was quite violent. I think it was pushing a PG-13 rating. When the soldiers show up at the mutant school, Wolverine skewers quite a few of them. It isn't "Pow!", "Wham!", action movie violence. It's a guy jamming 12-inch blades into people's guts.

Anyway, questions and gripes aside, I thought it was a damn good SF/action flick, the best I'd seen in a long while.

When you check it out, let me know what you think.